| Tourism industry has undergone a rapid development along with the economicglobalization. With the booming situation of international tourism industry, tourismtexts are facing challenge as they do not only offer necessary information to readers,but also address potential visitors. Besides, whether the tourism texts are constructedin a well-organized way may exert a vital impact on tourism industry since thecommunicative function is to introduce scenery spot, catch readers’ attention, andeventually persuade readers to make the traveling decision. Due to the great influenceof the tourism industry, so far many researches have been conducted. However, thereare few studies focusing on the contrastive analysis between Chinese and Englishtourism texts on the realization of interpersonal meaning. Therefore, a detaileddiscourse analysis is necessary and significant.This thesis is based on the theoretical framework of Halliday’sSystemic-Functional Grammar, which advocates that interpersonal meaning could beaccomplished through Mood System, Modality System and Person System. Inaddition, Appraisal System is also adapted to the this framework. As a tentative study,both the qualitative and quantitative analysis are employed so as to maximize thereliability and minimize subjectivity. All of the tourism texts are chosen fromprofessional tourism websites and official websites of the tourist city. All in all, thedata includes thirty pieces of English tourism texts and thirty pieces of Chinese ones.The present research aims to find out the similarities and differences betweenChinese and English tourism texts in terms of the realizations of Mood System,Modality System, Person and Appraisal system. Through careful calculation anddiscussion, both similarities and differences are found between these two types oftexts. The similarities are:⑴With the Mood System, the majority of sentencesstructures are in declarative mood both in Chinese and English tourism texts.⑵Asfar as the communicative functions are concerned, in both texts of the two languages,interrogatives are used in order to catch readers’ attention and stimulate them to takethe trip.⑶In terms of the Modality System, both English and Chinese tourism textscontain many modal operators with low value so as to express writers’ politeness topotential readers and visitors.⑷To establish a pleasant relationship with readers,two groups of samples all use modal adjuncts to show readiness, obviousness andobligation;⑸In both texts, a high frequency usage of second personal pronouns canbe seen, which create a face to face communicative effect, making the texts moreinteractive and persuasive.⑹Concerning the appraisal system, appreciationexpressions are employed much more than other types of attitude both in Chinese andEnglish.The differences found are:⑴Concerning the mood system, there are moreinterrogative and imperative clauses in English tourism texts than those in the Chinesetourism texts.⑵In terms of the modality system, there is a high frequency of modaloperators with high value in Chinese tourism samples as writers like to convey thefirmed confidence about the scenery spot.⑶On the other hand, More modal adjuncts are employed in Chinese tourism texts than the English samples.⑷Concerning theemployment of personal pronouns, in order to show politeness to readers, the Chinesewriters employ the second person pronoun "nin (您)", which has no counterparts inEnglish.⑸As for the appraisal system, Chinese tourism texts put much moreemphasis on the objective appreciation expressions whereas the English ones paymore attention to subjective affect expression.In conclusion, this study reveals the similarities and differences between Chineseand English tourism texts, demonstrating the cultural and linguistic impact on thecomposition of texts. |
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